Omer (00:11.760)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan, and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies, and insights to help you build, launch, and grow your SaaS business.
In this episode, I talked to John Stoica, the co founder and CEO of Certify, a SaaS product that enables companies to electronically sign contracts and collect payments quickly and easily.
So you've got a great SaaS product, so why aren't more people buying it?
Well, it might be because you're targeting a market that's too broad.
Maybe you need to narrow your focus.
But how exactly do you narrow down a market without going too small?
In 2008, two brothers in Chicago, John and Nick, had the idea of building a SaaS product to let companies electronically sign contracts.
They did some research, built a prototype, and quickly landed their first customer.
Things were looking good for their business until one day when they turned up to work, they were served papers for patent infringement.
They were being sued by one of their big competitors.
Now, many people would have given up at this point, but the brothers decided to fight the lawsuit and they eventually won.
But they had to work on it almost full time for eight months, and it cost them close to $150,000.
It was a huge distraction.
And in those eight months, they did very little to improve the product.
The market started slipping away from them, and their product was quickly becoming obsolete while their competitors were continuing to innovate and were also raising a lot of money.
So they knew that something had to change.
Eventually, they decided to narrow down the market and focus on a really small segment.
Instead of competing in a market with millions of prospects, they chose a market with about 300 potential customers.
It helped them to get super clear about their target customers and exactly what problems they had.
And that bet paid off.
Today, their company still targets the same market and generates over $10 million in annual recurring revenue and has about 60 employees.
And on top of that, their business is totally bootstrapped.
It's a great story with tons of ups and downs and great insights.
I really hope you enjoy it.
All right, let's get on with the interview.
John, welcome to the show.
John Stojka (03:10.090)
Hi, Omer.
Thanks for having me.
Omer (03:12.970)
So what gets you out of bed?
Do you have a favorite quote that you can share with us so we can get an insight into how you think about life and business?
John Stojka (03:22.410)
I do.
I have one that I apply not only to my personal life, but also to business.
And I would say success is a journey, not A destination.
Omer (03:30.650)
I agree.
So let's talk about certify.
Give us a quick overview of the product.
What problem are you trying to solve for who and what does the product do?
John Stojka (03:45.650)
Yeah, so at a high level, what we're trying to do is take friction out of the sales process.
So anywhere where there might be friction, whether it's paper or whether it's a process issue, we're trying to make it easier, more convenient for our customers.
Today the way that we're doing that is that we're helping them get contracts sign faster using E signatures and we're also helping them get paid faster using our payment capture tools.
Omer (04:10.690)
And who are your customers, your target customers?
John Stojka (04:13.570)
Yeah, so we have a pretty focused segment of customers.
We call it the events vertical.
So our customers are facilities or organizations that are holding events.
And this could be anyone from Dave and Buster's who's having birthday parties and topgolf to hotels who may be hosting corporate events or weddings.
And they're using our solution to send out a contract.
Typically the contract will have all the details of the event.
Once they get the contract signed, they'll then also have a payment that they need to capture and what these event companies, the reason they're using our tool is because they feel that a deal is really not done until it's paid.
Omer (04:53.480)
So you guys launched this business about 10 years ago, is that right?
2008?
John Stojka (05:01.000)
Yeah, it seems like 20, but yeah.
Omer (05:05.080)
So how did you come up with the idea for this business?
John Stojka (05:07.800)
Yeah, so my brother and I co founded the company and this whole vision of the paperless office was it's been around for a long time and you know, it's definitely been inches its way there.
Right.
So we create documents electronically, we would deliver them electronically, we'd store them electronically, but it was always broken during the signature process.
So typically somebody would receive a contract or a document that they need to sign, they'd print it, they'd sign it and they'd either fax it or they'd scan it back for an electronic storage.
So we thought, hey, what if you can keep that signature process electronic, then you have really a truly end to end electronic process.
A paperless office.
And you know, but we knew that the issue with signatures was that you've been signing documents a certain way for 30 thousands and thousands of years.
So we knew this was going to be a difficult habit to break for people.
But we began on that journey.
Omer (05:59.270)
Were there similar products on the market when you started?
Because I'm trying to think back to what was Happening around that time.
Were there no solutions out there or.
They were, but you felt like there was still a gap.
John Stojka (06:15.750)
What really kind of enabled the E signature market was legislation passed by Bill Clinton in 2001, and it was the E Sign Act.
And at that time, right, there was just a bunch of companies.
So as soon as he signed the act, 10, 20, 30, 40 companies really kind of went to market.
Most of them failed, if not all of them failed, because the problem that they were trying to attack was the authentication of the user.
So what they felt was the most important part of getting a document signed electronically was making sure that person is who they say they are.
But then became a new breed of kind of eccentric companies around our time, maybe a little bit earlier.
And the approach was, it's not really about the authentication.
Well, it is in certain cases, but in most cases it's about the ease and convenience of it.
So the attack on the E signature market was more against faxing.
Right.
So the people that were getting documents faxed back to them.
So by the time we entered the market, there was a handful of competitors.
Within four or five years, I think that we were there, there is 15, probably competitors.
So it became a very competitive and saturated market.
Omer (07:27.130)
But when you launched, what was going on?
Like, how active was how many competitors were there?
John Stojka (07:32.090)
There were some, but they weren't getting a lot of traction.
So they were raising some money, but they weren't getting a ton of traction at the time.
None of us really were.
So we would get on sales calls with customers and we'd show them the software and they're like, hey, that's all great, makes a ton of sense.
But is it legally binding?
Am I going to be the guy who's going to kind of go out there and get a contract signed using these signatures and not have it enforced?
Omer (07:54.960)
Okay, so you guys saw this opportunity to build this product.
How did you get started?
Did you go out and sort of try to validate the idea?
Did you stop building a product right away?
Like, what did you do?
John Stojka (08:11.600)
Yeah, so we kind of had this idea.
So we were sitting around with like, hey, what if we could just kind of do this east signature thing?
So, you know, we were in Chicago at the time.
I just came back from San Francisco and we had a pretty good network out here.
So we went to one of our friendlies and it was a company that was actually down the street from us, It's Career Builder.
So we walked into their offices and we knew the VP of sales.
We kind of sat down with Them we said, hey, you know, kind of how you getting contract signed today?
He said, well, let me show you.
So he took us back to the fax machine and he's like, they're all coming right through here.
And we'd watch these reps just kind of sit right next to the fax machine, just waiting for their contracts to come back signed.
So we approached him, we're like, hey, what if we can kind of keep everybody at their desk?
You know, they'll get alerted when the contract's been signed.
And what if we can make it a little bit easier, more convenient for your customers to sign?
Typically, the contracts are a little bit lower dollar value.
And he's like, hey, that's great.
Show me what you got.
And at the time, we didn't really.
We were kind of starting to build a tool, but we weren't sure we wanted to build, so we kind of scoped it out with them, went back and built a prototype for them, and we started out with 10 other users, and within, I think 18 months or so, we scaled to about a thousand other salespeople.
Omer (09:24.030)
Wow.
And that was all within CareerBuilder?
John Stojka (09:27.150)
Yeah, that was all within Career Builder.
So there, you know, we found that one customer that was going to give us our start and, you know, was going to work with us and they're going to go through some of the bugs.
Right.
They're that early adopter that has a pain, so they're willing to kind of take a little bit more risk.
Omer (09:41.420)
Yeah.
So over 10 years, I'm sure, you know, the product has evolved a lot and become a lot more sophisticated.
I'm curious what that first version of the product was like.
Like, how basic or complex was it?
How long did it take you to build it?
John Stojka (09:59.340)
Yeah, it was pretty basic.
It was really just a portal.
It was just ability to log into a website.
Right.
You would log in there, you would type in the email address the person needed to sign it, and you'd upload the document.
And then we do some alerts around the contract.
So we let you know when it's been signed, we let you know when it's been open, things like that.
But it was really, really basic.
There wasn't really any integration points at that time.
Omer (10:25.830)
How did people sign it at the time?
Like, did they just type in the name or were you trying to do something a little bit more kind of funky?
John Stojka (10:34.760)
Yeah, we just type in their name.
We were just grabbing their IP address and we're grabbing their email address and that was our verification mechanism.
So they'd receive a link, they click on it, and they would just read the contract and type in their name.
Omer (10:49.880)
And how long did it take you guys to build that?
John Stojka (10:52.840)
So we spent probably, I'd say three months, probably getting our first 10 users up and live, so people that could just log into a portal and send it out.
When we started to scale to the larger group, you know, obviously we spent the next 12 to 18 months kind of getting a product a little more robust, more reliable.
We also had to build an API because they wanted some integration points.
Omer (11:15.400)
Did you charge them like upfront or when did you start charging Career Builder?
John Stojka (11:21.000)
Yeah, we charged them up front.
So we said, hey, we, we're happy to kind of come in here and do a pilot for them.
So we charge them a pilot fee and then contingent on how the pilot went, they would move directly into a monthly fee that we would charge them.
Omer (11:34.440)
So basically you kind of pre sold the product.
John Stojka (11:37.720)
Yeah, so we're bootstrapped.
So that's how we did it.
Right.
You know, we try and won't go out there.
We had a few other customers too.
So once we began with Career Builder, there was a couple other Chicago based companies that we started working with and we got commitments from them as well.
And that's where we started getting our funding and we take that capital and would use that to invest in our developers.
Omer (11:57.680)
I know you started the company with your brother Nick.
Are either of you technical or like, what's, what's your background?
John Stojka (12:05.440)
Yeah, neither of us are technical.
Nick's probably the most technical of both of us and he got technical really fast.
So he was doing a lot of the product scoping.
He can't, he wouldn't code, but he really knew the product really, really well and could work with customers.
And not only the sales and the marketing groups inside the customers, but the tech groups, the IT groups, and that was important.
So we had a lot of learning to do.
Omer (12:29.450)
So he was playing kind of a product management type role?
John Stojka (12:33.050)
Yeah, yeah, product management.
But he, you know, also had the sales skills.
So that was necessary for us in the beginning to be able to sell the tool but also be able to converse with the IT groups.
Omer (12:45.050)
So I mean, in many ways it sounds too easy, right?
I mean, you have this idea, you know, somebody who works at a local company, you go and tell them about the idea and they're like, yep.
And you build a product, you, you charge them up front, build the product, and before you know it, you've got a thousand sales reps using the the product.
John Stojka (13:06.320)
We were feeling pretty good at the time, so we had a couple of customers, and, you know, we were just starting to roll.
But things got tough really fast.
You know, one of the first things that happened to us, I think, after we got our first big customers, is there was a company in the marketplace who's raising some capital.
I think they've ended up raising like 500 million to date.
So they, you know, became the gorilla in the market.
But as soon as we got a few big customers, they filed a temporary injunction on us for patent infringement.
So that was a little distracting, to say the least.
Omer (13:42.970)
How big was the company at the time, like you guys?
Like, was it just still just you and Nick?
John Stojka (13:48.090)
Yeah, it was Nick and I.
And I think at the time we had a developer or two who's working on the platform.
So we were just getting.
Starting to get some momentum.
And, you know, one day I walked into the office and there was somebody who was serving us some papers for, you know, patent infringement.
And it was really a big test of our grit.
You know, you hear a lot of entrepreneurs talking about perseverance.
And that was kind of one of the first tests that I had to meet, and I think Nick and I had to meet was what was going to happen with this patent, because these things can typically take about a million dollars in capital to fight.
So not only did they sue us, but they sued about four or five other of our competitors in the market at the time.
And we were the only ones who actually decided that we were going to fight the patent.
So we spent probably the next six months or six to eight months trying to invalidate the patent.
And fortunately, we were able to submit a rebuttal to the uspto, and they actually did invalidate the patent, but not without a cost.
Right.
It was very, very expensive process.
And it also wiped out six to eight months of our time.
Omer (14:54.970)
How much money did it cost you guys to fight that?
John Stojka (14:58.730)
It probably cost us $130,000, $150,000.
So at the time, we had some customers, and really, instead of, like, putting it to development, we were just trying to, you know, take the checks that were coming in and get them out to our.
Our legal team.
Omer (15:13.790)
So I'm curious, like, why.
Why did you decide to fight that?
I. I think a lot of people, you know, if they're early, fairly early stage in.
In building a business and they get that kind of letter turning up, however it does, and you start thinking about crap, this could mean, like you just said, I could spend million dollars just Trying to fight this thing.
Maybe we should go work on another idea.
Like, why did you guys decide not to do that?
John Stojka (15:45.120)
You know, I think part of it was we, you know, you mentioned a bit earlier, we just kind of had some traction, right?
So we felt like there was something there.
So we're like, hey, we might be onto something, but I probably wouldn't be completely honest, but I didn't tell you that there was definitely some pride in it, pride into it as well.
And, you know, when someone attacks you like that, especially the patent itself wasn't very strong, and we weren't doing a lot of things that they were saying that we were doing.
And it was a typical patent troll kind of tactic.
Right.
But in this case, they knew that whether they're right or wrong doesn't really matter.
It's, you know, whether you have the funds to defend yourself.
And unfortunately, that's the way our patent system works.
But I felt like, you know, if we weren't doing anything wrong, I figured let's just try to give it a good fight.
Let's fight as long as we can.
And, you know, as hard as we can, we're gonna.
If we're gonna lose a business, we're gonna lose the revenue anyway, so let's go out and give it a fight.
And we felt, and I felt pretty confident that we could win.
Omer (16:34.420)
And how much money were you making?
At the time we were making, our
John Stojka (16:38.860)
revenue was very little, so we probably had four or five customers.
And majority of that revenue that was coming in was for the developer.
We weren't paying ourselves at the time.
And it was going to our legal or to the legal counsel.
So it was consuming all of it.
And I just remember kind of running downstairs to the, you know, the P.O.
box, right, every day to the mailbox and seeing what check we can get in.
So I can make the payroll or I can keep paying the legal team.
So it was a very stressful time, that's for sure.
Six months seemed like six years.
Omer (17:07.640)
So all the money you were getting from your customers, your subscription revenue, was going to pay your developer or your legal costs?
John Stojka (17:16.979)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Omer (17:19.059)
And how much of your time and Nick's time was this taking up over that six to eight month period?
John Stojka (17:23.619)
It took all of it.
It was all of it.
It's a big distraction to the business.
You're always thinking about it when you go to sleep at night.
You always got that worry over yourself.
And we made a lot of commitments to our customers.
So some of those early customers that we had, they were relationships that we had.
You know, we didn't want to leave them hanging and say, you know, just pull the plug on the tool for them after they've done all the training and all the investment, installation and everything like that.
So even if you weren't working on it, it was in the back of your mind and you're very, very worried about it.
So you would sit there and you get on the, on the Internet, right.
And you search up like patent litigation and learn as much about it.
I mean, I quickly became like an armchair lawyer, Right.
I just knew so much about it.
Omer (18:04.750)
Okay.
And so eventually, after these painful six to eight months, you win the what is it?
Yeah, the whatever.
John Stojka (18:12.450)
Yeah, never think better.
Right.
Then you're out the clear, right?
No, not really.
Omer (18:20.530)
So what happened then?
So you say, okay, all right, great.
So no patent issues.
We can get back focus, sense of relief, I guess.
Now let's get out there and keep double down and improving the product.
Getting more customers.
John Stojka (18:35.410)
Yeah, exactly.
So, okay, we get through it and a great sigh of relief.
But there's still some adoption issues in the market that we're still fighting.
Right.
So people still have the legality questions about these signatures at the time, but we get through it.
And so we start bringing on some more customers.
And we brought on a really big one actually.
We got really lucky with a project that was happening with a large customer.
It was a Fortune 100 customer.
So this is like a year or so later and we're getting a little more traction and you start building up the organization.
Then all of a sudden we, you know, we have a three year contract with this larger customer and you get a phone call about a year and a half into the contract and they want to cancel.
And at the time, you know, this customer was doing about 20% of our revenue.
Omer (19:20.000)
Wow.
John Stojka (19:20.440)
That was another one of our landmines that we had in the business.
Omer (19:26.960)
Wow.
And what did that mean, like losing 20% of your revenue at the time?
Like, what did that mean in, in terms of day to day operations?
John Stojka (19:38.030)
Yeah, it just means you're just, you know, you scale back and you know, we try to work with that customer and try to get a little bit of revenue coming in for a few months at least, just to kind of make.
Continue to make payroll and make those things.
And so what that means is like you just start grinding it out again, right.
And you just start getting back on the phones and you're trying to make it all up.
And you know, we were growing at the time, even though we were A smaller company, we still were growing about 30 or 40% per year.
So, you know, within about a year we were able to make all that revenue out.
But it's hard.
It's really hard.
And, you know, you keep trying to get this momentum in your business, and as soon as you feel like you're two steps forward, you get hit right in the gut and, you know, you gotta take another step back.
And it just feels like when you're building these companies, right?
It just feels like that continually happens.
And so my advice to people, when they ask me, you know, about being an entrepreneur, you know, it's definitely one of the things that you really have to be good at is be perseverant.
You have to be dedicated to what you're going to do, because you're going to be tested many, many, many times.
And it's not that nothing will happen to you.
It's almost guaranteed that these things will happen to you.
It's very, very rare that you hear companies, people who build companies or get started, that they don't have these moments.
So you really have to be prepared for them.
Omer (20:54.710)
Did you have to let anybody go because of losing this customer?
John Stojka (20:59.990)
No, we didn't.
But it really stopped hiring, it stopped momentum, maybe we canceled some projects, things like that.
And, you know, it creates other issues in the business too.
You know, for example, you know, we would kind of argue about this internally a lot, but what we started doing then is we just started looking for one off projects, you know, so we're trying to build that repeatable scalable process, right?
That repeatable scalable product that you can sell to multiple people.
And that's always kind of the goal.
But when you don't have the money coming in, what you would do is you go to your customer and say, hey, can I do an sow for you for $15,000?
Is there a feature functionality that maybe you need that only you need, knowing that nobody else would ever need that functionality?
We just started building those.
And even though that was revenue coming in the door, it just kept putting us maybe another step back from really finding that ultimate product market fit.
Omer (21:53.240)
So sow a statement of work for people who aren't familiar with that.
Essentially it's a proposal, right, that you were kind of going out there and giving people.
John Stojka (22:01.960)
Yeah, it's consulting work, right.
And you're trying to build a SaaS company that's, you know, got the monthly recurring revenue and you're selling consulting work.
You're doing the opposite.
What you really should be doing, what
Omer (22:13.360)
was the impact of that, because, I mean, it sounds like a lot of people sort of do it the other way around, right?
They, they usually are in a consulting services business and then they figure out how to transition to a SaaS.
Like you guys were doing it the other way around.
John Stojka (22:29.370)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So, I mean, really, this kind of stuff, really the ultimate thing to do in the SaaS companies, right, is to find that product market fit.
So it just slowed us down and stopped us.
And then our competitors just kind of were doing what they need to be doing.
And, you know, we had a couple really big competitors out there, Adobe and Docusign, and they were just raising tons of money.
So they, they can afford to make some these little mistakes and they can afford to kind of spend a little bit ahead of the adoption, but we couldn't.
So what eventually kind of started happening, you know, around 2011, probably about three years, three or four years into the company was the market started slipping away from us.
So we were quickly becoming, you know, obsolete.
You know, we had a solution, but it was a me too solution.
So we would get on calls and we would try to win deals, but it was really, really tough.
I mean, we just.
I remember going through a period in 2012 where I think we're losing, you know, 8 out of 10 deals that we're starting to see.
Omer (23:29.070)
Why was that?
John Stojka (23:30.510)
I think it's because the competitors.
The competitors were building, you know, a solution that had more feature functionality.
The competitors had a more secure.
They were putting a lot more funding into it, and we just kind of got left behind.
Omer (23:44.970)
Okay, so you sort of lost that momentum because you were spending more time doing this consulting work just so you were bringing in more revenue, which essentially becomes a big distraction for everyone in the company.
And you're probably building a whole bunch of stuff that now you also have to support once you've got it out there.
And at the same time, it's harder to close these deals.
Were you losing customers as well, existing customers that you had?
John Stojka (24:21.940)
Yeah, for sure.
I think we were.
You know, there's customers that we got on early, you know, that really didn't have a great reason to stay with us.
Right.
I mean, we weren't kind of innovating and we weren't the, the industry leader for them.
So, you know, a lot of them stayed because of great of the customer success that we had.
And we were small enough that we were able to keep really tight relationships with a lot of these customers.
But, you know, that was always a concern.
And, you know, I'd spend, then I'd spend a lot of time just kind of go on the road, just seeing our existing customers and just, you know, gauging the health of them and making sure that they weren't going to switch.
Because every time we lost a customer, it was just another setback.
Omer (25:00.160)
So I think that's often a fear for a lot of founders, and especially ones who bootstrap a business, that you see an opportunity, you see that maybe this is the right time to get into that market.
And one of your biggest fears is that some big company like the 800 pound gorilla in your industry is suddenly going to turn up or wake up or decide to build a competing product and they're basically going to destroy the opportunity that you, you see ahead of you.
And it sounds like that happened, but at the same time there was like one issue after another issue, which just meant that, you know, even if you hadn't had those things, you know, at least you would have been able to try to keep evolving and innovating with the product.
But you couldn't even do that either.
John Stojka (25:58.030)
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it just made it harder and harder.
You know, definitely these things that happened to us were setbacks, but, you know, they weren't really ultimately the reason that we just weren't able to really kind of get the business to where we wanted to be.
I mean, the real reason that we couldn't get the business to where we wanted to be was because we didn't really identify, properly identify and segment the market.
And it wasn't really until we did that, until we really sat ourselves down and we said, hey, look, we're going to build a business that if we leave the market today, people are going to be sad that we left.
Right?
So we're going to add some value.
We're going to do something very unique and very different.
And we're not going to be a me too player.
And it wasn't really until we did that that we kind of started really growing.
Omer (26:38.280)
So who did you think of your target market at that time, before you said, before you had that conversation about getting more focused?
John Stojka (26:44.280)
Anyone?
Omer (26:45.080)
Anyone?
John Stojka (26:46.920)
Anyone who clicked on our Google AdWords campaign?
Omer (26:51.200)
You're not alone.
I think many of us start out that way, right, because you don't want to limit yourself because you're not really clear about who that target customer is.
And if you pick the wrong niche or segment, then you're just making life harder for yourself.
But the reality is that this comes up over and over again, that even though it seems counterintuitive by narrowing your focus, you're going to be able to do a much better job.
And it doesn't mean you have to stay narrow like that forever.
But it takes a lot of courage to put your, you know, stake in the ground and just say, this is.
This is the segment or niche we're going after.
So for you guys, it sounds like that decision was forced upon you in terms of all these things that are happening around with competitors and the market and customers.
John Stojka (27:49.230)
Yeah.
Losing deals will definitely do that to you.
Omer (27:51.870)
Yeah.
I'm sure it gets you motivated.
John Stojka (27:54.910)
When you get off these demos and you keep losing them.
Yeah.
You're like, all right, I think it's time for a change.
Right.
Omer (28:00.350)
Okay, so then the next question is, okay, great.
Step one is accepting that you have to narrow down your focus.
Then the big question is, how the heck do you actually do that?
Like, how did you guys figure out where you were going to focus?
John Stojka (28:18.120)
Yeah.
And, Omar, you know, one thing I'll add to that, too, is that I knew better, you know, and I came from, you know, a company that was successful, and we did that.
We learned how to verticalize our solution.
We knew that segmentation was really important.
I read a lot of books about this, and it was just funny when we did it, we built the business, and it came down to it.
It was amazing how difficult it is to keep your courage.
Right.
You have to stick to what you believe, no matter how painful and how hard it gets, because it's the right thing to do.
So, you know, we were just taking any dollars that were coming in at the time, but it wasn't the right thing to do.
And I was taking them because we needed them.
Right.
I just wanted to make sure that we could, you know, keep making payroll.
Right.
And keep our commitments to our employees.
But, yeah, so to answer your question, how we kind of figured it out was after we were kind of going through this pain, right?
And it became painful enough where, you know, we like, hey, let's just kind of buckle down.
We, at that time, we probably had about a million dollars in ARR.
So I felt like, you know, we had some money coming in the door.
We had a good base of customers.
I felt like I could take some risk, you know, like, even if I went out and I made some things, maybe picked a vertical or something, I didn't feel like the business was going to fail.
So what we did is I grabbed our marketing communications person at the time, and I'm like, hey, let's go do a roadshow.
So we essentially went on the road for 12 months.
We hit about 12 different trade shows in different verticals.
So we went after and we looked at finance, and we looked at real estate, and we looked at insurance, and we looked at events, and we looked at all these different verticals.
Another one was home healthcare.
I mean, anything was not, you know, was not off limits.
Right.
And what I wanted to do is I really wanted to learn.
I'm like, okay, what are the pains that these verticals are having?
And after 12 months, what I was going to do is I was going to come back to the office and I was going to say, okay, these are the ones that we picked.
And eventually what we decided on was the events vertical.
The reason was we didn't have a competitor that had saturated that market yet.
And also what we were hearing, you know, from that customer was, hey, it's great that you get a contract signed, but I'm not going to reserve a room, I'm not going to book a room for somebody unless I get the money.
So now we started to see that there's a different additional pain point for that customer.
And the other one we picked was home healthcare for a different reason.
Not great reasons.
We eventually dropped that one after about five or six months and just focus exclusively on events.
Omer (30:40.610)
Why did you decide to spend 12 months doing this?
Because most people, if they're in a situation where they feel like under pressure to change, you probably want to figure that out pretty quickly.
12 months seems like a really long time to do that.
John Stojka (30:57.880)
Yeah, I just wanted to.
I wanted to learn.
I just kind of wanted to get out there.
I felt like I didn't know enough about all these different industries, and if I was really going to make a decision that was going to affect us for the next five years, 10 years, I felt like I wanted to have enough data on that.
So I spent time learning a lot about a lot of the different verticals.
Omer (31:16.440)
So it wasn't like the business was hemorrhaging money and you were going to have to shut down in a matter of weeks.
You were generating revenue and you were generating enough to keep the lights on and pay the bills, but you weren't growing.
John Stojka (31:34.550)
Yeah, yeah, that's accurate.
We were growing, and we just felt like we weren't growing as fast in the market, you know, there.
But we could see a lot of red flags.
Right.
So, you know, we're competing with these bigger competitors and, you know, we're losing such a large percentage of the deals that our sales and our marketing expenses were getting really, really high.
So if you're losing 8 out of 10 deals, I mean, you can imagine how many Google AdWords clicks you have to start paying for right before, you know, our CAC was going up and everything was kind of going the wrong way.
So even though we're growing and we figured we could probably keep growing and we could probably survive because the market itself was growing, we didn't feel like it was a long term viable plan.
Omer (32:13.160)
And what did you do when you turned up at these events or these trade shows?
Were you just wandering around and trying to find people to talk to?
Did you set up a booth?
Like, what was the way you, you made the most of, of these, these shows?
John Stojka (32:27.560)
Yeah, we set up a booth.
So we typically go to booth.
We, you know, promote our wares and I would, you know, we go to the events that they always had after the event, the parties, and we talked as many people as we can.
We ask them if they're using a solution, who are they using, are they happy?
You know, is there additional things that they felt like they can use in a product like that and what integration points they wanted and all these different things.
You know, for insurance, for example, we would talk to the platforms themselves.
When we go to the platform shows, there's like two major agency platform systems.
We talk to them, we say, hey, are you guys, you know, partner with anybody?
Do you want to partner with someone?
And then we kind of identify how big their market is as well.
And that was just the kind of data that we were trying to get.
Omer (33:09.030)
Okay, so you come back and you say, okay, team.
We think events is a vertical that we should focus on.
There's an opportunity here, but you don't.
You've built the whole bills business and presumably you didn't have many customers in the events vertical.
Yeah, exactly.
A little problem.
John Stojka (33:29.430)
You make it sound so bad.
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's funny because I go, I come back to the office and we had a VP of sales at the time.
So I'm okay, great.
I go, I, I figured all this out.
I'm like, we, I know what to do.
And he's like, great, what are we gonna do?
I'm like, we're going after the events market.
We're gonna hit all these hotels and all these event companies.
He's like, awesome.
He's like, how many hotels we have on the platform?
Like, none.
The conversation didn't go over very well.
Omer (33:55.710)
So, you know, even if there's an opportunity, it's like the obvious concern is that you Know, you've, you've gotta, you know you're going to kill the cash cow.
Right, Whatever.
You know, it might not be a great cash cow, but it's still the cash cow to build this new vertical.
John Stojka (34:10.350)
Yeah, it was, it was a risk.
And we, you know, an entrepreneur is right.
That's the risk you're going to take.
And you know, the analogy I always like to give, people ask me about startups and survival and it's kind of like the sea turtles, right?
And what happens is, you know, with these sea turtles is that they lay eggs, the sand, and they'll lay 50 eggs, let's say, and only 25 of them will make it to the water.
And.
But you just have to be willing to take that risk.
You got to be willing to kind of get out of the sand and get to the water, and there's a risk to that.
So we were going to hit this events market.
We really didn't know anything about it.
None of us were in advance.
None of us ever worked at a hotel.
You know, we didn't have any customers there.
I mean, I've had some conversations, I had some data to back me up.
I had an inkling, you know, I had a feeling, you know, and obviously my experience at, you know, doing this before was very helpful and all the readings that I've done and all the knowledge I had was very helpful.
But it was a good gut feeling.
But I had a feeling about it, but I wasn't sure.
And we went out and we did it.
And, you know, at first it took a long time.
It was really, really hard.
But, you know, once we got our first customer, one of the first ones we had in the event space was Dave and Busters.
He was actually using a competitor at the time, and there was a pain point that he was having the payment product.
He was trying to get payments from his customers.
So once we kind of solved that form, he switched over to our platform.
But once we got them, we figured we put them on the board and we said, okay, great, let's go find another 20 that look and walk and talk exactly like them.
And, and then from there it just got a little bit easier and a little bit easier and we knew who to target, who to segment, what questions to ask, you know, what integration points they needed and all those things.
But the first one is definitely the hardest.
Omer (35:52.660)
So Dave and Busters is a, is a restaurant chain, right?
John Stojka (35:57.140)
Yeah, Dave and Buster is a restaurant chain, but they have events, so you can have your birthday party there.
You know, any Kind of party and you need to, you know, sign a contract saying what kind of food you want and how many people you're going to have and you need to put a deposit for the event as well.
Omer (36:10.100)
Okay.
And I'm curious about like how you had to start changing your product to get it focused on this event vertical and what did that do to your existing customers or did you build a separate product?
Like how did you approach that?
John Stojka (36:29.070)
Yeah, we basically bolted on to the existing product, so to these signature products.
But you know, a lot of our development now went to this bolt on.
Right.
The bolt on is the payment component of it.
It's the ability to capture payments.
So while you're investing in that, you're not investing into something else.
It was definitely, you know, it's definitely going to be disruptive to your existing base.
But that's where all of our commitment went to.
That's where all of our development was going to.
Omer (36:56.220)
And did you see kind of a grow increase in churn with your customers when you started doing that?
John Stojka (37:02.780)
Yeah, I mean, for sure.
So, you know, we went through, right.
A lot of the early customers that we were getting, a lot of the AdWords customers that we got, you know, the small businesses who kind of looking for something.
You know, we started seeing a higher churn with them, but we were replacing it with these event companies that are a little bit bigger deals and much more sustainable.
Yeah.
So you definitely will, if you, if you make some kind of change like that, you.
I think it's highly likely that you'll see some churn.
Omer (37:30.980)
I mean, it's obviously paid off because you are doing well in the events vertical.
Now where are you guys?
Can you, can you share some numbers in terms of size of company, customers, revenue?
John Stojka (37:47.070)
Yeah, yeah.
So, you know, just kind of.
One other thing I want to mention too, it was really important, you know, when you're segmenting your market as well, is that when we started going to the events market, we calculated there's about 60 or 70,000 event companies in the United States.
So what we had to do is really kind of narrow that down.
So the lessons that we learned.
Right.
Was that if you're attacking a broad based market, you're going to most likely fail.
There's a book by Peter Thiel, it's called Zero to one.
I think, you know, anyone who's listening, it's a great book.
Definitely, definitely read it if you're learning really how to do some segmentation.
But his argument is that you're better off having a pond of 10 customers, potential customers than you are of 10,000.
And we kind of took that to heart.
So we kind of use that as the template for us and just explain
Omer (38:31.990)
like the rationale why you're better off having a market of 10 customers.
John Stojka (38:36.240)
There's more commonalities.
Right.
So the broader the group that you start to market segment, the more differentiation they'll have.
So the more feature functionality they'll probably need.
Right.
Everybody has different processes.
So what we did is we actually narrowed down to 300 companies.
So even out of the 70,000, we narrowed it down to 300 potential customers.
And what was really interesting.
Here's the thing, Omer, this is what was eye opening to me, and this is the advice I would give to anybody.
It's so counterintuitive, but the smaller your market, the smaller you keep making your market, the faster you'll grow.
Omer (39:15.700)
Wow.
John Stojka (39:16.260)
And that was really hard for me to kind of believe as it was kind of happening.
But as I started, as we started, we went from 10,000 customers to 5,000 to 300 potential customers that we were looking at.
We just started growing faster and faster in a more sustainable way.
So we really were starting to find that predictable, reliable, scalable sales process.
Omer (39:35.420)
How did you come up with that 300 customer list?
Like, what was this criteria you were using?
John Stojka (39:41.660)
Yeah, so the way that we segmented it, essentially it was what we call property management companies.
So it's what they do is they'll go out to a hotel, and hotels are typically owned by some big REIT or someone, you know, maybe an endowment or something like that.
And once they buy the structure, the hotel, they need somebody to run it.
So they go to these property management companies.
So that was the group that we targeted.
And these property management companies aren't huge, you know, but they have big assets.
But they may have three or four IT people.
So it wasn't really hard to segment them or to target them.
But that was the people that we went after.
Omer (40:19.400)
And why did you focus on them?
John Stojka (40:21.970)
So they, they would manage 10 to 20 properties.
They had the pain point.
They're the ones who kind of need the tool.
And what we do is we kind of walk them through it and maybe they want to put it into all their hotels or all their properties, but we get them to do maybe one of them, and then we'd have some success in one of them.
And once one of them would have success, they go back to the property management company and say, it really works really well.
You should put in all of them.
And that's what we just started doing.
And today we have about 8,000 properties on the platform and we're going to grow to about 12,000 in the next 12 months.
And we process almost $2 billion in payments today.
Omer (40:59.300)
Wow.
So out of curiosity, you narrow it down to 300 potential customers.
How many of those 300 actually became customers?
John Stojka (41:10.660)
Not a lot.
Omer (41:11.540)
Not a lot.
This just keeps getting better and better.
Right?
John Stojka (41:16.180)
We are still working on it.
It's crazy.
You know, we're like 10% into it.
Right.
I mean, it's.
There's just so much more that we can be doing there.
Yeah, we have a long ways to go for sure.
And we haven't even really kind of started tacking a lot of the.
A lot of our market or segmentation internationally as well.
We're going to start doing that this year.
Omer (41:36.390)
Okay, but.
But currently you have around 8,000 customers, right?
John Stojka (41:42.710)
Yes.
Omer (41:43.270)
So where did they come from?
John Stojka (41:44.550)
Yeah, so I guess we got kind of defined customers.
So we have about 8,000 event sites.
So for example, we consider, we may consider Top Golf has 40 event sites.
So we got it.
Okay, okay, 40 sites.
But that's really one customer.
Omer (42:00.450)
And you're still focusing on that property management segment.
John Stojka (42:05.330)
Yeah, yeah, so we're focusing on the property management segment.
We're also focusing on brands, so we talk about customers.
We also have deals with, you know, Hyatt and Hilton and Marriott and they put us into all their properties.
So, you know, someone like Marriott, for example, actually has 5,000 properties.
So with one customer, you know, you can get a large event, you know, a lot of properties.
Omer (42:31.860)
Okay, so I want to kind of just recap this because I think this is, this is an important point.
You started out with a product which was, as you said, anybody who would buy it.
And you, you did have some success with that.
You got to a million dollars a year around that mark, taking that approach.
But you continuing to see a bunch, you hampered by a bunch of challenges.
And there were these much bigger players in the market who were investing much more heavily and continuing to just out innovate, you guys with just because they had so much more money to spend.
Then you decided, okay, instead of focusing on everybody, we are going to look at the events vertical where there are potentially 60 or 70,000 companies that could be customers.
And then you went even further than that and said, okay, within that 60 or 70,000, we're only going to focus on 300 of those companies.
And your revenue has gone from 1 million ARR.
John Stojka (43:47.520)
To what, you know, we're past 10 million ARR now.
And our next track is to get to 50 million in ARR.
Omer (43:56.080)
See, that on its own is like a data driven example of what can happen if you narrow down and find a segment that you can dominate.
You've still got a long way to go in terms of potential customers.
You can get there in this, just in this niche.
John Stojka (44:20.430)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
And you know, we.
What I'd like to say to everyone too is that being successful is really just relative.
When I talk about success is a journey, not a destination.
Right.
You know, we define success as being the largest E signature and payment provider in the industry.
So, you know, we're not the 800-800-pound gorilla in E signatures.
We don't have as many customers as some of the larger players.
But in terms of if you need, have the need to get a contract signed and collect a deposit or capture some kind of authorization, we have the best solution for you.
So success is really relative.
Right.
And if you just stay at $1 million in ARR, I mean, I, to me, that's building an extremely successful company and I think don't give themselves enough credit for that.
Omer (45:08.500)
Yeah, no, totally.
I agree with you.
And I just, in fact, I would say building a company that does six figures a year, if you're able to turn that into a profitable company and spend your time building and improving a product that you love and serve a market that you love spending your time in, I think is also just as successful.
John Stojka (45:32.290)
Yeah, I mean, Omari, I mean, you have this podcast, right?
It's a great, right?
I mean, what's your opinion on it?
I mean, you've built a podcast that SaaS people like me love to listen to.
I tune in all the time.
I learned so much.
You know, not only are you, have you been successful, but you're helping enabling all of us to be successful as well.
Omer (45:53.240)
You know, the interesting thing about this podcast is when I started out like four or five years ago, it was called the Conversion Aid podcast and it was still doing the same thing in terms of finding founders of software companies and helping to tell the story.
And, you know, why did I call it Conversion Aid?
Well, because it was a domain I had and I didn't think anybody, I didn't think many people would listen anyway.
So I just thought, like, why waste time on the branding?
Just start podcasting and see what happens.
And I kind of ran with that for a couple of years and, you know, it kind of got now, you know, people get the word got round and people started to, you know, associate conversion aid podcasts with these sort of SaaS businesses.
I still had people who would turn up for, you know, I, I interviewed one guy who turned up for an interview and he was like, so this podcast is about conversion rate optimization, right?
And I was like, no, actually it isn't.
Right.
And, and it was just like, I, I don't know, I was thinking, but it was just like at some point I was like, you know, someone, somebody asked me like, what's, what's the podcast about?
So it's like, well, it's about, it's a podcast about SaaS companies.
And that's kind of what just hit me one day.
It was just like, why don't I just call it the SaaS Podcast?
And just by doing that, it's been, it was almost like day and night in terms of, suddenly people were like telling me, you know, I'm so glad you did this because, you know, I've been looking for a podcast like this and there just hasn't been anything out there.
And I was like, it's been out there for like two years.
Right, but why weren't you listening to it?
Um, so, yeah, just in terms.
But, but again, it just seemed like, you know, counterintuitive.
Like, well, I mean, apart from the stupidity of using a domain like that, which really didn't convey anything about the software business, just telling people broadly this is about software companies and then ultimately saying, no, this is really about SaaS.
And I think even where we're now, where we are now is just like, it's much more about early stage SaaS companies.
And a lot of them are, you know, bootstrapped and self funded businesses.
And yeah, I think the more specific you get, it just, you just do a much better job in terms of whether it's a product or a service or a podcast, how you present things or package things, or how you prioritize what's important and isn't important, how you reach people, everything starts to become easier.
John Stojka (48:27.820)
Yeah.
And you know, I, I don't know if you agree with this, but these journeys that you go on, and I encourage everybody who's listening to go on this journey.
If you have, if you have the desire to do it, you can do it.
We define success in a way that's like, well, are you $100 million business or a billion dollar business?
If you're not, you're not successful.
And I don't really think that's true.
You know, so much of it's on the journey.
Even what you've Done, Omer.
It's just been such a huge impact on all of us.
But would you agree with this statement is that you learn more about yourself than anything when you go on these journeys?
Omer (48:59.330)
Yeah, totally.
You know, whether I talk to people or I look at my own personal experience, you can kind of get into this stage where you're like, oh, I wish I'd done this two years ago or three or five years ago.
But when you look back, you realize that in order for you to get to where you are, you had to go on this, this journey.
You had to have certain experiences.
Otherwise you just wouldn't have been ready to do what you're doing right now.
Does that make sense?
John Stojka (49:28.920)
Yeah, yeah, that makes total sense.
Yeah, absolutely.
Omer (49:33.560)
So anyway, I mean, it's just like I love your story and you know, we talked about this briefly before we started recording that you guys have bootstrapped a business.
You're doing over $10 million a year now and still growing and faster.
How big is the team now?
John Stojka (49:56.930)
So we have about 55 people and we're growing about 50% per year.
So we're going to add another 35 people or so this year.
Omer (50:06.130)
And you guys are profitable, right, because you haven't taken any outside money still, again, like, what I loved about this story is that just you've gone from making a lot of the mistakes that a lot of us make and then just to add more fun, those kind of patent infringement type issues along the way, and you've overcome them and done really well.
John Stojka (50:36.900)
The lesson, I think, for anyone here is it's really just about segmentation.
So you could segment your market in so many different ways.
You can segment it by SMB, by enterprise, you could segment it by vertical like we have.
You get segmented, you know, even by location.
Right.
You know, by state, whatnot.
Depends on the proximity, how much value that adds to your customers.
But you can define success any way you want.
And, you know, I encourage everyone.
Like, you know, we've obviously had some success for sure, and I'm very grateful for that.
But it's all relative.
So if you want to start a business, you want to build something, and even if there is a bigger competitor in there, like we've had, right.
There's been a big gorilla in the market, but that doesn't mean that we can't be successful.
So if you see a market that looks saturated to you, or there's a big heavy player, very strong player in there, there's probably still room for you.
Right?
There's probably definitely still room to add value.
And I would encourage people to keep going in those markets and keep innovating.
Omer (51:33.910)
Yeah, I agree.
And I think that, you know, you talked about, you know, what defining success.
And I think building a company, a company that you're proud of and you're still passionate about is much more important than how many zeros you have on the end.
Because I mean, yeah, sure, you could go and build a hundred billion dollar business and be totally miserable.
That doesn't sound like success.
And it kind of reminds me of this.
I, I, I have this, you know, I don't usually share quotes because I ask my guests to those, but there's one that has really been really important to me that I often refer to and it's a quote about success from Ralph Waldo Emerson.
I don't know if you've ever come across this.
And it says to laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends.
To appreciate beauty, to find beauty in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition.
To know that one life has breathed easier because you lived here.
This is to have succeeded.
And I just love that.
For me, it always just puts things into perspective, especially when you're in those.
Like, you know, being an entrepreneur is this roller coaster of these ups and downs.
And, you know, when the roller coaster is going down, it's always good to kind of, you know, put things into perspective.
John Stojka (53:08.740)
You know, I tell my employees that all the time.
Like, you know, we all get focused on, you know, the compensation for sure.
And I think it's, it's very important.
But I tell them when this is over, you will reflect more on the journey.
Right.
And experiences the people that you've met than the money you've made.
Omer (53:25.660)
Yeah, absolutely.
All right, we should wrap up.
So let's get on to our lightning round.
I'm going to ask you seven quick fire questions.
Are you ready?
John Stojka (53:38.780)
I'm ready.
Omer (53:39.580)
Okay.
What's the best piece of business advice you've ever received?
John Stojka (53:44.940)
Take the field.
So when we first started the business, we would go to, and I talk about the early customers, we would go to them, we had a solution and we'd show it to them like, hey, this is, you know, this is what we're doing.
Like, hey, that's great, but can you add this feature functionality?
Then we go back and we try to build that for another three to six months.
And whatnot.
But really we had something that worked.
Just take the field, go out and sell it, build the MVP and get out there.
Omer (54:10.750)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
John Stojka (54:14.270)
I think Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore.
I think it's foundational to building a SaaS business.
You have to understand the segmentation and you have to understand your customers buying behavior.
Omer (54:28.360)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
John Stojka (54:33.640)
Perseverance.
Omer (54:35.720)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
John Stojka (54:40.760)
Exercise.
I think you need to get up in the morning.
I think exercise is really important.
A healthy body and helps for a healthy and strong mind.
Omer (54:49.890)
What new or crazy business idea would you love to pursue if you had the time?
John Stojka (54:54.690)
I want to build a lawn bot.
Cuts my grass.
Omer (54:58.610)
Don't they already exist?
John Stojka (55:00.050)
Yeah, they're not any good.
Omer (55:04.370)
Yeah.
Watch out for patents.
John Stojka (55:06.530)
Yeah.
Omer (55:07.810)
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
John Stojka (55:12.150)
I like watching hgtv.
Omer (55:16.470)
Oh, me too, man.
I don't know what it about.
It's just a really.
A great way to just relax and unwind.
Actually, you know what?
One of my.
One of my very first guests, probably like one of the first five interviews, was Peldi Guiziloni, I hope I pronounced his last name correctly.
The founder of Balsamiq.
And he was the one, I think, you know, there was this show, I don't know which channel it used to be on about.
It's called like how things are Made.
Have you ever seen that?
John Stojka (55:49.120)
No, I haven't.
Omer (55:49.880)
And basically it's like they just go into like a manufacturing plant where they make like drinks or something.
And they just show you the process of how they make that drink, from getting the ingredients to the production process to bottling, etc.
And you just have this light music which sounds like elevator music while they're doing it.
And this narrator, and he was like, I just love that.
It helps me go to sleep.
All right, and finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?
John Stojka (56:23.660)
I would like to say learning is a lot of fun, but I probably golf.
I love to play golf.
So it's relaxing.
It's form meditation.
Right.
So just get out there and just kind of forget about everything for a little while.
Omer (56:36.480)
Awesome.
Cool.
So now if people want to find out more about Certify, they can go to certify.com that's s e r t I f I dot com and we'll include a link in the show notes.
And if people want to get in touch with you.
What's the best way for them to do that?
John Stojka (56:57.280)
Yeah, it's a first initial last name, so it's just jstoica certified dot com.
Omer (57:02.500)
Excellent.
John.
Thanks, man.
It's been a pleasure.
And I just love this story.
I love what you guys have done.
I really appreciate your openness to talk about all your challenges and mistakes along the way.
And I like being able to share a happy ending.
And hopefully this is just the start of a lot more.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Because there's no destination, right?
John Stojka (57:32.220)
Yeah, that's right.
So we just keep the journeys going.
Omer (57:36.140)
Awesome.
